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By
Patricia McFadden
Introduction
On reading a text recently, authored by Sheila J. Wise [1], I was both surprised (at the ease with which the author felt licensed to represent the racist, sexist views of white settler males in a region that is so wrought with tension on these issues) and deeply affected by the matter-of-fact manner in which white males referred to black women through blatantly colonial and stereotypically racist tropes, at a time when one would have hoped that they have had some kind of reflection on their brutal history and life-styles in this African place. Wise, who seems generally unperturbed by the often overt pride that the Afrikaners expressed with their 'history' of apartheid and colonialism, presents a disturbing picture of white males vis-à-vis their black (ethicized) Owambo counterparts, with the latter coming across as basically promiscuous, disloyal and unloving to their intimate partners, explicitly sexual and highly sexualized subjects, fulfilling most of the racist, colonial stereotypes associated with black male heterosexual identity and behavior.
In the section on 'Afrikaner Sexuality', her respondents are reported to have said the following in relation to condom use and race.
`Given the real and hypothetical scenario of having sex with a white woman, most men admitted that they 'would not and had not used a condom'. However, given the same scenario with a black woman they would 'definitely use a condom'. Interestingly, even if the black woman were elite, the men still said they would use a condom. This reiterates the general perception of HIV/AIDS as a 'black disease' and that race more than class is a key factor in the sexual behavior of Afrikaner men'
The article by Wise, which is part of a collection of research studies, conducted mainly by white researchers based in Namibia or visiting this country occasionally, jolted me into thinking more closely about the ways in which the landscape of ' sexuality and black corporeal existence' was undoubtedly changing - in no small part due to the engagements and contestations that black women as scholars/intellectual s and activists have initiated and are driving across this region.
However, more disturbingly, it also signals the persistence of entrenched discourses of supremacist exclusion and patriarchal misogyny that are once again finding their way into the texts, public media, state and global NGO utterances and agendas.1 This renewed backlash, which is reflected in very specific forms of exclusionary discourse, politics and practice, is what I would like to say a little about in this short piece. I shall conclude by repositioning a feminist perspective on this contentious issue, as part of an ongoing feminist initiative aimed at reclaiming and celebrating black female sexualities and identities in this and other regions of the continent.
The context of black female sexualities in southern Africa:
Given that I live and work as a radical feminist predominantly within the region of Southern Africa, and that most of my writing and thinking about African female sexualities2 has focused on black women living and struggling in this part of the continent, I would like to focus on what I think are the very specific features of two divergent discourses and representations of black women in this arena. I refer to the region as an arena because in numerous ways, most of the most crucial contestations and contentions around identity, presence, citizenship and about the future of being African are playing out around SEXUALITY in the countries of this region. Additionally, my focus on Southern Africa is also a rebuff to the rather glib generalizations that are so causally made these days about Africans regarding anything and everything. This is another old, bad habit that has found fresh breath in this moment of socio-political crisis and transition to post-coloniality.
The question is basically: Why the obsessive focus on the black female body as a sexualized and deeply contested site/object of enquiry and rescue at this moment on the African continent. Although the colonial, racist stereotypes of the black body as a 'dis-eased body' are quite universal and can be perceived and or read in literature/statistics about HIV and Aids in Europe and the US and elsewhere, the African continent has become the 'hub' of activity from a liberal, religious, medical/pharmaceutical and philanthropic perspective.
This preoccupation characterizes the behavior and policies of mainly outsiders - people who encompass 'western' donor agencies of various sorts, individual researchers across a wide political spectrum, from everywhere, representatives of fundamentalist religious agencies, and philanthropic organizations of all sorts and ideological orientations.
Side by side with this cohort of 'curious and concerned' outsiders, is the burgeoning interest of the national state, often accompanied by representatives of the women's movement and civil society organizations, whose anxiety around and about the sexuality of girls and young women in particular, has provided an (unexpected yet convenient) bond between the two most crucial sectors of our societies at the present time.
Central to this 'bond' between the State and Civil Society are the challenges posed by of HIV and AIDS, although this in not the only issue that underlies the 'partnership' between these two players on the issue of black female sexuality in all the countries of the region and at a continental level. Increasingly, we see partnerships between civil society organizations and the State around issues of 'poverty' (which I would rather call economic exclusion); sexual health in a wider sense than only the issues of the HI virus and its outcomes; sexual violence, particularly the brutal violation of young females within families and in institutions of learning; the impunity and femicide unleashed on females of all ages in situations of war and flight(so-called refuge in UN/liberal parlance); and the upsurge in sexualized forms of brutality directed against women who choose to love other women and or to re-define their sexual and socio-political and cultural identities in terms invented and determined by themselves and their specific communities (LGBTI and radical feminists)
Certainly, because the issues of HIV and AIDs have been so noisy and the conservative, intolerant discourses that accompany them have assumed such hegemony3 beyond what used to be the peculiarities of religious and right-wing agencies, one must of necessity recognize that the HI virus has assumed a life of its own. In creating this 'momentum' - the virus has not only exposed the depth of structural and socio-political exclusion and neglect within each of our societies, historically and currently, but, it has also posed a new and often confounding challenge to many of the assumptions we had begun to take for granted as activist women/resisting communities.
This is reflected in the massive production of articles; medical research texts and statements; newsletters, brochures, posters, campaigns; videos and other modern media artifacts; the formation of new organizations that are dependent on the persistence of this virus and its impact on working communities in particular; massive amounts of research funding from states in the North to the pharmaceutical industry and the military; AID to neo-colonial states that is 'AIDS -targeted'; traditionalist who are clutching at the straw of a 'return to culture' as a response to the pandemic; marketing organizations that are focused on the sale and distribution of products and messages related to HIV and 'combating' its spread as well as managing its consequences - the list goes on.
It has become an entire industry, driven by capitalist neo-liberal ideology, and accompanied by a chorus of activists, researchers, state representatives and non-governmental agencies - all intent on acting upon the black body , but specifically upon the 'black female body' .
This is what I see as the troubling features of a re-contextualisation of black female sexualities into a hegemonized, pathologized and appropriated sexuality ( emphasis on singularity) - which is becoming more and more controlled and defined by the very elements and forces that the women's movement and feminists in particular within the movement, have resisted and challenged ( and successfully rebuffed) for the past three or so decades.
While one sees increasing access to anti-retroviral drugs and the strengthening of health-delivery infrastructures in some societies (usually as a result of the struggles of courageous and fearless activists, many of whom are living and engaging with the virus/condition), we also see the use of punitive sanctions which affect the very people who are supposedly the 'subjects' of humanitarian concern in other countries - Zimbabwe being a vivid example of this hypocrisy.
While this latter point is also passionately contentious, the interpolation of Robert Mugabe as a hegemon into every and all conversations about the lives of Zimbabweans in the current context, can in itself be self-defeating and pendantic .
Nonetheless , these juxtapositions of 'selective humanitarianism' are meant to emphasize the point that HIV and AIDS have become the undisguised mirror-images of 'globalization' in a peculiar but deeply problematical sense for us in southern Africa and in the so-called societies of sub-Saharan Africa in general.
Behind the façade ( excepting the well-intentioned activist and financial support as well) awaits the more complex analysis of how black sexualities and black female sexualities in particular are being reshaped and re-contoured; marked and signed as particular objects of intervention by capitalists and reactionary-conservative forces - many of which serve as the agents of continuity for the persistence of 'relationships' of repression, exploitation and appropriation within an intensified international capitalist system.
By seizing the ' opportunities ' 4 that are offered by the rampancy of this virus and its patriarchally driven resilience5 , the fundamentalists and ideologues of right-wing hetero-normative control over women's bodies and their sexualities (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, trans-sexual and intersexed), are consciously and diligently producing textual, visual, and varied electronic materials that are aimed at sabotaging radical positions on women's sexual rights and entitlements, and systematically removing sexual rights from the ambit of rights as a notion and as a resource that all humans are entitled to everywhere. In fact, they are re-writing the script on rights.
The body and the face of the black woman has become the 'signature' of AIDS. There are texts and statements that position the faces and bodies of African women and girls as the 'vectors' of the virus without blatantly saying so (clearly in this region, the persistence of openly racist representations of black bodies as diseased are not entirely gone, as witnessed by the article by Wise,) but the intentionality is deeply entrenched in the practices and stances that too many activists have adopted as part of the rapprochement between the State ( northern and continental) and increasing numbers of civil society activists, including the majority of women's movement activists.
In fact, writing about HIV and sexualities in radical ways can even inspire the ire of 'radicals' in the women's movement, who counter with allegations of recklessness and subjectivity - characteristics that ironically have been the flag-ships of radical feminism from it's very inception as the critical and cutting edge of women's resistance always.
Therefore, we see a coalescence of 'interests' between the global state (represented mainly by EU and US donor agencies and their international organizations - which are increasingly employing some of the most articulate and most experienced activists as their program officers in the region, based predominantly in south Africa) and the national state, which is writhing in its efforts to establish its independence from the imperialist west ( with dire consequences for such impertinence in some cases) - on the issue of HIV as a 'political windfall' through which the radical tendencies among civil society activists, and in particular among women activists and their organizations, can be 'reeled' in and managed. Although there is often vilification and apparent tension between these two state-located forces, there seems to be general consensus that HIV and the management of AIDS has provided critical political and strategic opportunities to 'damp-down' the fervor that civil societies in the region where bringing to the public in their demands for fuller citizenship and inclusion into the post-colonial dispensation. The United Nations has played a pivotal role in facilitating this conservative rapprochement. One needs only to re-read the UN documents and stances on critical feminist issues over the past decade to see how skillfully this states'-agency has undermined and sabotaged the struggles of radical activists for a direct relationship with the states in all our societies, and interpolated itself (together with other western-funded agencies) between the emerging citizenry, especially working-class and rural black women, and the crisis-ridden neo-colonial states. 6 We have moved from terms like misogyny and femicide, patriarchal violence and female genital mutilation, to gender-mainstreaming, gender-based rights, and gender-based violence and Female Genital cutting/excision/etc.
All these hybridizations of feminist terminology and the de-politicisation of critical conceptual tools within women's movements and within women's studies programs signal the re-appropriation of the very means by which feminists and radical activists were able to establish some limited entitlements and protections for women. It is especially in Africa that we encounter a consistent intellectual and activist backlash against our language 7 , our research efforts, and our identities. The combination of colonial hegemony in our academies, with very heavy traffic of donors and other global NGOs, makes for continuous reversals in our struggle s to define ourselves and our futures.
Returning To Resistance And Celebrating Black Female Eros
Such critical reflection on the processes by which the black female body (and the black economically excluded male body to a certain extent), has become the focal point of struggle over the definition and direction of the future of this continent.
It is not coincidental that elements who fight each other and vilify each other in other contexts, have quickly reached a consensus over the need to reign in the radical tendencies and demands of women, specifically around sexuality and the kinds of power that women derive and 'deploy' from this site.
The very recognition that African women embrace and cultivate diverse, powerfully erotic and health-giving sexual identities which transform the very meanings of power, sexuality, health and identity as defined and constrained by the status quo, is in itself a challenge that causes deep anxiety within all the sectors of the patriarchal state and its ancillary institutions (so-called traditional leaders, religious agencies of various types; and gate-keeping groups within the society whose function is to 'moderate' the impact and influence of women's politics on the state and the society in general). Note that the most barbarous and de-humanizing acts of violence and hatred against women and girls are embedded in 'sexualized' expressions of this impunity and manifest themselves through discourses, practices and habits that 'target' the interiority and human-ness of females.
However, African women have dared to step outside the bounds of convention and hetero-normative construction and are increasingly challenging the status quo, particularly on issues of sexual choice and orientation. The creation and expansion of a movement (built largely through continental alliances) of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex communities in increasing numbers of African countries, which is having a dramatic impact on women's politics in general (by forcing the heterosexist women's movements to come to terms with the politics of LGBTI women as a reality of women's politics in this century) is one of the most fantastic moments of feminist achievement for us currently.
The challenge is to embrace the energy and courage of this movement and to infuse it into the flagging politics of the women's movement (a task that is monumental but necessary), and to engage the LGBTI movement on its most radical tendencies so that these cutting edge energies can be transformed into new forms of solidarity within the women's movement, as well as boost the strength and consolidation of the feminist movement on the continent.
We know, as radical women, that when we are positioned in places where we own our bodies and our lives; where we are able to define our sexualities in ways that give us pleasure and strengthen us , our political visions and understandings of patriarchal society and all its repressive strategies and practices become clearer and transformational.
We know that when, as African women, we are able to conceptually and theoretically imagine ourselves and narrate our own lives and histories, we are also able to craft new imaginaries - places where we can envision ourselves 'becoming citizens' in new and dynamic ways, re-position each and every woman in a direct relationship with the state and its institutions and challenging the hegemony of patriarchal exclusion in all its forms and expressions.
We know now, after two decades of struggling to articulate and create a process through which all African women can imagine entitlement to the experience and practice of bodily and sexual integrity (wellness and health) as the foundation stones of sexual health and reproductive rights, that this is possible only through the recognition of our diverse choices and sexual identities, which we must celebrate and protect
And when we are safe and happy in our own bodies and lives; when we are sexually free as human beings, we are also at our most dynamic, most brilliant, and most resilient to the scourges of repression and backwardness. At the core of human creativity and power - as collective, productive, sustaining values and practices, is the Eros of freedom and life. All of women's entitlements and struggles center on this desire to achieve this freedom of self, and this remains the crux of the matter in current and future struggles over the potential power of the black female body on the continent and beyond.
Endnotes
1 For a while during the 1980s and 90s, white and Northern researchers seemed to have adopted a more cautious attitude towards the issues of race and identity with regard to African women in particular, reflecting a recognition of tensions that African women had generated around the right to 'speak for ourselves' and to conceptualise and define our identities and herstories. This moment of caution seems to have passed with the license that HIV/AIDS has re-allowed researchers into the intimate lives of black people, and of women in particular.
2 Meaning that almost every social issue is discussed and or perceived in relation to HIV and AIDS in ways that are both homogenizing and intolerant in that they discursively erase all other elements and aspects of life and consequence, particularly with regard to working women and girls. Upon this 'flattened' objectification are imposed an essentially conservative, Christian-driven, narrow discourse and practice of hetero-normative sexuality.
3 Although feminists and certain women's movement/civil society activists have insisted on the accountability of the state in the delivery of services and entitlements regarding this condition, it is essentially the agencies and structures of northern/western societies who control the resources and discourses that are determining how the HI virus is managed and or contained on the continent.
4 Swaziland, a despotic, feudalistic, repressive society has the highest rates of infection and death from the virus. What other signifier of patriarchal 'nurture' do we need to find regarding this particular socialized organism in relation to humans.
5 I think that feminists and radical activists in the wider civil societies of the continent will have to pay urgent attention to the perniciously deceptive ways in which the UN in particular continues to undermine our struggles to position ourselves as Africans in direct engagement and contestation with our respective States. Since SAPS, the ubiquity of UN involvement in civil society activism and agenda setting has become the most destructive strategy in this regard.
6 The right-wing re-definition of FGM to mild/neutralized/euro-comforting terms like 'excision' 'surgery', cutting, etc and even justification of the genital mutilation of black female bodies as a matter of choice (see Njambi, 2004), is a persistent reminder of how deeply entrenched supremacist privilege and patronage are within the academy and around us internationally.
Reference
1. Wise SJ (2007)`The Male 'Powersexual': An Exploratory Study on Manhood, Power and Sexual Be haviour among elite Afrikaner and Owanbo Men in Windhoek'
* Patricia McFadden is currently the Endowed Cosby Chair in the Social Sciences in the Women's Research and Resource Centre at Spelman College Atlanta and is teaching a course on "African Feminisms in a Globalizing World.".
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